Welcome to my website. I am the author of ‘Vietnamese – Simple Vietnamese Food To Cook At Home’. I am a photographer and film maker. You can book into my supper club, Vietnamese cooking classes, buy my book, check out my photography and lots more here.
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Best Food Photographer in London
The supper club is held in my home in London Fields, Hackney. It is like a dinner party in the tradition of a Vietnamese feast with homemade Vietnamese food.
Vietnamese food is about the balance of flavours, of sweet, salty and sour – there is no measuring device that can ever match your own taste buds.
Steam the aubergines and make the sauce in advance then this only needs to be fried when you are ready to serve. These are great with rice, on top of rice vermicelli, cold with ciabatta. And of course, a delicious side dish. You can adjust the heat accordingly, add your favourite herbs and spices and create a different aubergine dish every time. Just follow this basic recipe and next time adapt!
Cabbage dumplings with pork and King prawns
Serves 3/4
Makes approximately 36 rolls
Ingredients
6cm ginger, peeled, finely chopped
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 spring onion, finely sliced
200g minced pork
75g Jerusalem artichoke, peeled, finely chopped (optional)
150g king prawns, peeled, chopped 1 cm
Pinch of pink pepper or black pepper
Pink of sugar
Pinch of saltRead More
As featured in The Guardian Feast March 2018 – readapted here
Pho is loved by the Vietnamese and people all over the world. Vegan pho is really popular because it basically has that “pho hit” without any meat which isn’t really missed here and takes half the time. The monks missed their pho so created the vegan kind.
This recipe is an example of what vegetables you can use and the quantities have been measured for this amount of water for the stock. I love to use aniseed flavour vegetables such as fennel and celeriac to bring out the flavour of “pho”. By using sweeter root vegetables such as sweet potatoes and carrots can help you use less sugar in the broth. You can make the broth much richer by charring some of the vegetables first.
You can use whatever vegetables you have available but it is really important to char the ginger and onion, this really adds to the marvellous flavour of pho and this step should never be missed.Read More
Baking has become a favourite is our household because everyone loves cake and Olive loves a good tea party and giving slices to her nursery teachers and neighbours.This is a very light and fluffy recipe, quite low is sugar too so I let her have her own slice of cake.Its really easy to make because it just involves putting everything in the bowl and mixing it and baking it. She loves sprinkling sprinkles when we are decorating.For the icing
I am the type of person who loves to travel to a destination specifically for the food it has to offer. I find great tranquility in cooking and I take great enjoyment in food shopping on holiday – whatever the season. For me, pleasure is food shared with others. Now that I have a young family, (my daughter is currently just under 2 years old), cooking is strongly weaved through our daily lives and meal times are milestones of the day, even on holiday.
We recently went to Tuscany with some friends. Sunshine, splish-splashing in the pool and good food was our entire agenda. We stayed in a gorgeous 4-bedroom Airbnb villawith a swimming pool, about 30 mins outside of Siena.
The villa had a swimming pool overlooking the endless groves of olive trees, luscious vineyards and lavender bushes spreading wildly under the golden heat. The major selling factor was also the many great dining spaces the villa boasts. Since having our daughter, we have had less time to spend with friends, and so big communal meals were always going to be a big part of our trip. We could take our pick of where on the property to eat, from the most romantic and breathtaking of places: under the tall, protective pine trees; underneath arches of thorns and roses next to the swimming pool and beside the giant perfumed fig trees. Inside the house, the kitchen was great for breakfasts, and the roofed balcony and various living spaces for snacks and feasts by candlelight and cicada cries. This was a perfect place for our new family to spend precious time with friends, especially with the bottles of wine left for us by the Airbnb host, who also owns a vineyard.
If you love cooking and feeding as I do, ideas for Italian-inspired recipes can be endless and I loved spending time in the cool kitchen, slicing melons and making fresh pasta. The kitchen had the most amazing view and such great contrasting light. I could seriously romanticise and be there all day looking out of the window, writing a novel and cooking meals for the family, if it weren’t for all the children running around! It had everything that we needed from big plates and platters for feasts, to pots and pans for cooking it all. The only missing thing was a pasta machine. We even found a second fridge for drinks which was great. If you love cooking on holiday, don’t be afraid to ask your host beforehand to detail exactly what equipment there is, just so you can make the right choice for you.
Food-wise, I firmly believe you wouldn’t miss meat if you just decided to cook all sorts of beautiful Italian vegetables and enjoy them with the simple pasta. Making fresh pasta is better but perhaps too time-consuming for all apart from the most dedicated foodies, so having it from the packet is just as good.
For me, there is no time or inclination to ever count calories or drink kale juices, especially not on holiday. Make cake, buy cake, eat cake and do what brings the family utmost pleasure.
Tuscan-inspired holiday recipes
Simple tomato pasta
Get hold of one or a variety of delicious red plum tomatoes. Fry with shallots/onions, garlic, chillies if you like them, and a splash of white wine, then season with salt and pepper. Add a couple of spoonfuls of water from the pasta pan, and reduce with butter or olive oil. When the pasta is cooked, I mix it all together and serve with torn basil and a fresh grating of parmesan. On some nights, we just used the sauce from a jar, just as good.
Roast vegetable trays
Lay your favourite cut vegetables on a baking tray and drizzle olive oil, season with salt and pepper and herbs. Choose vegetables with similar cooking times (which you can guess by the hardness/softness of each item) to roast together. If leaves are put in with butternut squash, for example, then the leaves might burn before the squash cooks.
My favourite pairings are fennel and aubergine; squash, olives and beetroot; courgettes & tender-stem broccoli. Add a whole or half bulb of unpeeled garlic, hardy herbs like mouthwatering rosemary and sage. Or make a fresh basil or parsley olive oil dressing to toss everything together in once it is cooked.
Tray roasts are also a great way of using up vegetables on the last few days when you have to eat all the fridge contents. Be inventive with ingredients and use what’s available. Sometimes the nicest things are the simplest things.
My spaghetti vongole recipe
One of my favourite meals of all time is a plate of glorious spaghetti vongole. Sweat out some onion, cherry tomatoes, add garlic, then clams and a generous amount of good quality white wine, chopped parsley, chillies (optional), a couple of ladles of pasta water, and salt and pepper, then leave on the lid for a few minutes until all the shells are open. Mix with grade-5 spaghetti. Done. Heaven!
My cover feature: The Guardian Cook Sat 15th July 2017
It makes the hard work of being a parent worthwhile and utterly thrilling when I see the shine of delight on my daughter’s face when she eats something she enjoys.
Olive is 21 months old and she likes saying “hmmm” when she eats. At six months, she was traditionally weaned on Vietnamese rice porridge, then we introduced fruit, vegetables, meat and fish to her bowl. She now has some firm favourites: avocado – spooned out of the shell, tenderstem broccoli, grilled asparagus, fragrant chicken pho … Every day, I fear she will change her mind and refuse her greens.
Her first introduction to “cooking” was sitting on the kitchen counter, picking and smelling herbs while I prepped food – like the hardy garden mint that tickled her enchanted nose and made her giggle.
Over the summer, she has been greeting our multiplying herb pots in the garden. With song and conversation, she waters the perfumed lavender tree and bashes the rosemary – because hitting it makes the smell linger in the air. Olive points her tiny fingers at the unripened green blueberries and says: “Wait.” She bumbles around with the big green watering can, avoiding the loitering spiders and buzzing bees; she picks strawberries and raspberries with her daddy then excitedly delivers them to me, like prizes, one by one. Later, we eat them with yoghurt and honey.
Olive loves texture, shapes, and hints of colour, like yellow buttons of sweetcorn, green balls of peas, ruby gems of pomegranate. Giving her the chance to touch and eat the things she finds interesting helps me learn what she likes. She loves slurping noodles or making a satisfying quenched sound after a big drink of water. She adores eating with her parents, sitting on a grown-up chair around the table and feeding the dog under it.
Please visit The Guardian here for toddler friendly recipes for all the family to enjoy too
Photography by Elena Heatherwick